SPEECH, Tne speech of the Earl of Beaconsfield at the Lord Mayor's dinner will be read with the keenest interest by Englishmen in all portions of the Empire, and the scattered dwellers in cosmopolitan Settlements like our own will in all probability cut open their newspapers at the pages which contain the Premier's oration, and peruse it before they read anything else. The disquiet and uneasiness which have been lately apparent, will be dispelled by the assurances the speech contains, and, as far as we can judge by telegrams, events which have occurred since the 9th of November, have all tended to corroborate the statements made at the civic banquet. The Premier deals at once with the great question of the success and durability of the Treaty of Berlin, Woe are informed every day by the Liberal newspapers and the; Liberal orators that it is a fiasco and failure; but here the ordinary reader is as good a judge as the diplomatist, for, after all, it is a question of fact. Lord Beaconsfield calls attention to one important point, viz., that if the grave matters which were settled at Berlin could have been settled in twenty-four hours, a Congress was necessary. They might have been settled by post or by the Queen's messengers. But " whenever a treaty hes emanated from a great Congress, it has always provided that a certain time should be allowed to carry the regulations into effect." And then he proceeds to answer the question. Has nothing been done during that time under the Treaty of Berlin? The reply is brief and satisfactory. Little more than three months have elapsed since the signature of the momentous agreement, and six results, all of them of -vastimportance, have been attained: Ist, Russia has retired from Constantinople, which was within her grasp; 2nd, Russia has retired from the Straits of Gallipoli, second only in importance to Constantinople, and by some deemed equivalent to it; 3rd, Russia has restored to the Porte the city of Erzeroum which will soon be one of the strongest fortified ports in Asia Minor; 4th, the Sultan has surrendered his fortresses on the Danube; 5th, Batoum, which it was said would never be obtained ex-copt by a sanguinary civil war, has been given up without bloodshed; and 6th, Committees and Commissions formed of the most able subjects of the different states of Europe, are arranging the lines of demarcation for the recently created states and provinces. When such active political movements have been going on under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, it is idle to say it is an inoperative document. With regard to the Afghan difficulty, of course it is impossible for us to have such distinct statements of results actually achieved. In the judgment of the Premier, the present North-west frontier of India is "a haphazard, not a scientific frontier." There is little more than a hint given on the subject, but it is a hint of very pregnant significance. "We shall live, hope, on good terms with our immediate neighbours, and not on bad terms, perhaps, with some neighbours that are more remote." On the subject of a possible invasion of India by an army marched through the passes of Asia Minor and through Persia, we do not think that there is need for special anxiety. Means are taken to prevent this occurrence by the convention with Turkey and by the occupation of Cyprus. This of course we have heard over and over again, but the Premier places the acquisition of the island of Aphrodite in a new light when he applies to it the remarkable expression "a place of arms," and speaks of it as "exercising a beneficial and moral influence upon the contiguous dominions of the Sultan." We read these words, and immediately think of a certain island near the shores of a great and decrepit Empire, miserably governed. We mean the Empire of China. Cyprus is to be shown to Turkey as Hongkong is shown to China—as an epitome of all the administrative virtues, a microcospo in which the ancient and corrupt State may see what good government is, a mirror at which it may dress itself. The comparison is not very encouraging, but the Chinese have toa certain extent realized the theoretical and practical merits of the system which obtains in the Colony. And there are failures in the parallel which give us hope for a happier result in the case of the Ottoman Empire than that which we seo close at hand.
The Tarks are not the Chinese, and we cordially expect that the auguries of Lord Mayor's Day will be fulfilled and that Cyprus will be so well governed as to stimulate the Sultan to learn the moral lessons wise rule inculcates and to profit by those lessons. The closing portion of the speech was as vivid and brilliant as any of Lord Beaconsficld's best efforts, He deprecated the idea that we were to decay or to suffer effacement, He denied that our lot would be that of Genoa, Venice or Holland; and avows his belie that 1 nation of the character we had borne was more likely to create empires than to give them up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.